“We could sooner fit the oceans of the world in a teacup than understand God” by Mark Jones
“When we consider God’s attributes, we must always consider them as infinite. His infinity is a positive concept, so that we must say that His attributes are intensively and qualitatively infinite.
God’s infinity is the highest sense of perfection. Without bounds or limits or degrees, God knows infinitely (Isa. 40:28) and is a sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. He is as present in our midst as He is farthest from us in the universe. Yet while He is present in one place, He is never confined to any place.
The psalmist explicitly acknowledges God’s infinity: “Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure” (Ps. 147:5). God’s understanding exists without measure. The psalmist here combines one attribute with another, as he does elsewhere. God is great, because He is abundant in power (omnipotent) and measureless (infinite) in His understanding (omniscience).
Because God is eternal and omnipotent, nothing can limit Him or be too hard for him: “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?” (Jer. 32:27). He is the eternal, independent, powerful God who determines all things.
He is perfection, so that nothing extends beyond him. God’s infinity consists not in “indefiniteness” or “potentiality” but in the perfection of His attributes. God is fully actualized potentiality. In other words, He cannot “become” anything; He always has and always will be what He alone is: a fully actualized being who needs nothing and possesses everything.
Affirming God’s infinity implies his incomprehensibility. We can never know God as He knows Himself, for the finite cannot comprehend the infinite. We possess a bounded understanding, because we are creatures. God has a boundless understanding as the infinite, eternal God.
We could sooner fit the oceans of the world in a teacup than understand God. Our grasp of God compared with God’s actual being is like a dim light compared with the vast radiance of the sun. We can say with certainty that what we know about God can never be full but only adequate (i.e., saving) knowledge, which can always increase.”
–Mark Jones, God Is: A Devotional Guide to the Attributes of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 44-45.
